Monday, September 25, 2006

The homework myth

When will newspapers stop publishing such wrong-headed drivel?! (These jokers were in the NY Times a few weeks ago and today they were in the NY Daily News.)

Another school year has barely started, and already homework is weighing heavily on New York City's children - and their parents.

At a time when 58% of Black and 54% of Latino 4th graders in this country are ILLITERATE -- they cannot read a simple children's book at age TEN!!! -- the LAST thing we need is LESS homework!

My two slides (www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Homeworkmyth.pdf) show how little homework American children of all races and ages are doing -- and how much time they're wasting in front of the TV... It would indeed be wonderful if there were doing these things:

Let's make sure our children have time to read for pleasure (the No. 1 educational activity according to top educators), eat dinner with our families (the single strongest predictor of better achievement scores, according to the University of Michigan), play with friends (the real work of childhood, according to psychologists) and find and pursue a passion.

Another school year has barely started, and already homework is weighing heavily on New York City's children - and their parents. Some parents are already rebelling. When one dad watched his fourth-grader's enthusiasm for learning plummet last week after his nightly homework increased to more than an hour at Brooklyn's Public School 146, he requested a meeting with the teacher. A mother at Brooklyn's PS 261 stopped homework problems before they could start by telling her kids' teachers that she didn't believe in such busywork.

These parents, like many others around the country, are fed up with the toll that homework is taking on their families. And the research backs them up.